The invention relates in general to bidirectional audiovisual terminals intended to be used by consumers and in particular to equipment the initial costs of which are low and the operation of which is based on combining known devices and utilising their characteristics in a new and inventional manner.
Electrical telecommunications terminals intended for consumers can be divided into unidirectional and bidirectional devices. The most common unidirectional terminals are radio and television receivers. The most widely known bidirectional terminal has been, until recently, the telephone, but fax machines and computers with modems have now caught up with it. It has been suggested that a future home terminal equipment will be capable of transferring high-quality sound and images and other data bidirectionally in the form and at a time freely chosen by the user. So far, however, it has only been proposed equipments designed for certain limited applications, sharing a fairly high purchase price and a limited number of services available through them.
Consumers often find it hard to understand why they should replace or supplement their existing and tried and proved terminals with a wholly new apparatus which, on top of it all, is also expensive. Considering the needs of conservative consumers it is better if they can be offered new services without considerable investments in unknown technology.
An object of this invention is to provide a method and equipment for offering to the consumers new services based on bidirectional communications without the consumers being required to acquire new devices to a considerable extent.